Lenny McPherson - The Late 1960s and Beyond

The Late 1960s and Beyond

After a bloody "gang war" in the late 1960s, during which McPherson allegedly coordinated (and occasionally took part in) the murder of several rivals including infamous brothel owner Joe Borg and his old enemy Ducky O'Connor and Stewart John Regan, Lenny became one of the most powerful criminals in Australia. With corrupt police, prison officers, lawyers and politicians on his payroll, McPherson was able to conduct his criminal activities with almost total impunity.

According to biographer Tony Reeves, when it suited him, McPherson acted as an informant to NSW police. In this role, he figured in one of Australia's biggest manhunts, the 1966 search for prison escapees Ronald Ryan and Peter John Walker, who had fled to NSW after a daring escape from Melbourne's Pentridge Prison, during which prison guard George Hodson was killed. Ryan and Walker were eventually captured in the grounds of Concord Hospital in Sydney in a major operation led by Det. Ray "Machine Gun" Kelly. According to Reeves, McPherson was approached by Ryan and Walker, who sought his help to leave the country, but McPherson then arranged a bogus meeting with them at Concord and tipped off the police to their whereabouts. Ryan was subsequently convicted and hanged for the murder of Hodson, becoming the last man in Australia to be executed.

McPherson is also believed to have facilitated the establishment of close contact between himself and other leading Australian criminals (Ronny Lee, George Freeman and Stan Smith) and members of the Chicago Mafia in the late 1960s—most notably through his infamous meeting in 1969, in Sydney, with Mafia hit-man, Joseph Dan Testa and Testa's bodyguard, Nick Giordano. On that occasion, McPherson even took Testa and Giordano kangaroo shooting. The following year, McPherson visited Testa in Chicago.

During the Moffitt Royal Commission, an informant alleged that Testa, as a representative of the mafia, "was conspiring with McPherson and a poker machine company, Bally Manufacturing Company, to corner the New South Wales market." Testa was later killed in 1981 in a car bomb explosion in a car park near Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA.

McPherson is also thought to have been a significant figure in the development of the illegal heroin trade in South-East Asia in the early 1970s. In 1984 the Gang Wars had started. There were three major gangs: McPherson's Team, Neddy Smith's gang which was backed by Roger Rogerson and there was Barry McCann backed by other police. With a pile of dead bodies, it was back to business.